“Meal prep is the key to success”

This is one of the secrets to being able to stick to your healthy eating plan. The saying “Fail to plan plan to fail” is true when it comes to changing eating habits. Without planning, motivation and conscious thought is required to create suitable meals. This is all well and good when you’re just starting, or when there are limited stresses in your life, or when time is plentiful.

But what happens if these ideal conditions do not apply?

We often see people start out well and get great results, only to find their weight loss slows and motivation drops as time passes. The problem is not with the program or with the person’s body; it’s a problem of organisation. Without organisation, the person ends up ‘winging it’ and, eventually, falling back into old habits.

Think about this scenario: You’re driving home from work at 6pm on a Tuesday night. You need to feed the family, get a child to soccer training at 7pm, feed the pets, water the garden and get at least one load of washing on the line. Just reading the list might be enough to create a little panic response, so something has to give.

Without weekend planning (and preparation), it’s likely that you’ll stop at a take-away and buy dinner. This might be OK if you weren’t trying to lose weight!

Imagine a different weekend, one where you thought ahead and knew that Tuesday night would be problematic. What to do?

Here are some of the strategies that I use to ensure the family eats well every day:

• Think about the week ahead and determine which meals can be prepared on the day, and which need advance preparation.
• Write a detailed shopping list – and remember to take it to the supermarket! Shop from the list. (I only shop once each week, but it’s fine if you have time and motivation to shop more frequently. Just ensure it’s always with a plan and a list.)
• Store the foods that will be prepared on the day they will be eaten. Keep out the foods that will be prepared now.
• Prepare and cook a variety of foods at once: A rump roast, a whole chicken, a tray of vegetables, and a frittata or breakfast muffins all fit in the oven together – I just need to remember the timing on each one.
• Use the slow cooker year round. It surprisingly does not heat the house up (like the oven would) in summer, so pulled pork can be prepared in the morning and eaten in the evening – with very little total time spent.
• Lay out a number of small and 1 large container and make salads for the week.
• Chop up vegie sticks, ready for a quick snack. Pre-slice some cheese (or buy it sliced) so it’s ready to grab. This works especially well for kids who can’t be bothered, or are too young, to cut their own food.

Enlisting this type of strategy not only ensures you have great food on hand for the week, it also saves time. Many of us are time-poor, so it makes sense to allocate an hour or two, once a week, for meal prep so that you save an hour every night.

For recipes or more ideas, talk to the Health Coaches in your nearest Healthy Inspirations centre.